Connection problems in the forum

I frequently get this message, when I try to open the forum, display a question or post an answer:

 Bad Request

 Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
 Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

 Cookie: X_MW_DOMAIN=mathworks.com; MW_AL=5c9a...

The problem appears in about 50% of the cases and I see it since about 32 hours. I have to click on the "Save" button twice most of the times, before something happens, and about half of my answers (and another version of this question) vanish.

Is this known already?

[Randy Souza]

Jan, have you noticed this in other MATLAB Central applications, or just here in Answers? Have you noticed it anywhere else on mathworks.com?

[Thomas]

The only issue I have faced is the increased load times for the answers page. The earlier load times were a few ms but now my page load times are in sec's sometime. (I am on a GigE line with low jitter and latency)

[Walter Roberson]

I have not observed the "Bad Request" problem at all.

I am merely getting the problem that 3/4 of my page loads never finish, even if I leave them for 12+ hours. I do not have that problem on any other site, and I do not have the problem if I access the UK server instead of the US server.

[Luffy]

Cody is also taking a lot of time,are any of servers under repair?

[Jan]

It seems like this problem occurs on one of my computers only. The last time I had such problems, my TMW-cookie has been confused after working on mathworks.de, mathworks.com, www.mathworks.com and after clicking on a link somebody has posted in the forum www.mathworks.it. A login concerns a specific domain only and it seems like login to different domains can cause troubles.

Therefore I will delete the MathWorks cookies and check if this helps - on monday.

[Walter Roberson]

Following on the above, I cleared all my mathworks cookies to see if it would improve performance connecting to www.mathworks.com . The opposite resulted: I now can't get anything in a reasonable time, with Firefox or Safari, not even individual pages (i.e., not just an index page problem.)

On the other hand, I did discover that with the cookies cleared that when I accessed the mathworks.co.uk version, it logged me on and I am now able to post and edit there, which works well as the .co.uk location is consistently snappy for me, whereas the .com version had been slow for me even when it worked.

[Jan]

Bump - since today I have to press the "Save" button twice before an asnwer or comment is sent. But I do not get the "Bad request" error (yet).

[Jan]

Now the problem appeared again after I've clicked on a link to http://www.mathworks.nl/matlabcentral/answers/3910-overload-get-0-monitorpositions. I got the same problems on my computer at home, suchg that I'm surprised that it still seems, that nobody else is affected.

[Image Analyst]

The page come up for me with no problem. Since the upgrade though I have noticed that it takes a long time (anywhere from 7 to 20 seconds) to update Answers or see "My Answers" or get any results after clicking on a link that resides in Answers - it used to be virtually instant.

[Ryan]

The page gave me no issues either. Perhaps is a browser + settings + random other application interference problem?

I was previously not experiencing any issues with "snappiness" or load times (even through the upgrade) until a week or so ago when I started being hit with multi-second load times like other users have experienced.

[Jan]

Yes, the page is displayed without problems for me also. But afterwards accessing other pages on www.mathworks.com becomes faulty. While I get this problem on two different computers, no other frequent user has observed this. Obviously I should take this more personally.

Could it matter that I'm logged in from different computers at the same time? [EDITED] A logoff-login does not help.

[Image Analyst]

I don't think so. I usually leave my home computer logged in (though sleeping) when I leave in the morning and then login here at work with no problems at all (other than slow page retrieval). So we're back to you personally. Maybe you should change your avatar? :-) Maybe try running it though http://www.effmypic.com/ or something.

Answer 1

[Randy Souza]

We are investigating the Bad Request issue that Jan reported--other users have experienced similar problems in other areas of MathWorks.com.

Clearing your browser cookies should resolve the problem, though in some cases (such as Jan's) this fix is only temporary.

I will update this Answer when we resolve the problem.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

[Walter Roberson]

Any progress on the issue that access to mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers and documentation is quite slow ? I've switched to using the .co.uk site to access answers, but the .co.uk site redirects documentation requests to .com for me so I cannot do the same for documentation. Fetching simple documentation pages often times out for me.

www.mathworks.com resolves to e218.b.akamaiedge.net which resolves to 23.14.96.244 for me (the exact IP resolved to is geographic dependent so it is possible for two people in different cities to get different results, if, hypothetically, something were wrong with only some of the akamiedge servers)

[Randy Souza]

We are working on a handful of performance fixes in Answers, but slowness from those problems should be similar from one domain to another.

I will look into whether there are any known issues related to doc or .com performance...

Answer 2

[Jan]

While the forum access is still slow, I do not get the errors anymore after deleting the MathWorks cookies.

So let me fix this, such that others can find this solution:

 If you have connection problems in the forum, try to delete the MathWorks cookies. Afterwards you have to login again, so be sure that your password is available.

It would be nice, if the forum admins react to meta questions.

[Jan]

I do not accept my own answers. But my problem is solved.

[Kent Millard]

Randy is out but I'll bring this to his attention when he returns.

[Randy Souza]

I haven't been able to track down a specific cause, but it looks like some MathWorks server(s) set a cookie that was overly long.

If this problem recurs please send me the contents of your MathWorks cookies before deleting them: $firstname.$[e-mail]

[Jan]

Thanks, Kent and Randy.